How the world turns a blind eye to African slavery

Paul Raffaele investigates the slave-owners of the Sahara, where more than 100,000 people were born into inherited captivity

SINCE I WAS OLD ENOUGH TO READ ABOUT Africa, I have been fascinated by the Tuareg. For more than a thousand years they were the fierce, veiled, camel-riding, sword-wielding warlords of the Sahara until they were ruthlessly conquered in the late nineteenth century by the French Foreign Legion. But when I told my family I longed to journey to the Tuaregs’ Saharan heartland, they would tap their heads signalling that I was crazy. That chance came after I read that ruthless, nomadic, Tuareg tribes in the small Saharan nation, Niger, ignored world-wide condemnation of their practice of keeping more than 40,000 slaves — women, children, and men — in lifelong bondage. It was known as inherited slavery. These tragic people were born as slaves, possessions of their masters from the moment…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2022

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